Now in its ninetieth years, Bentley’s first opened its doors in 1916 in the same beautiful old Victorian building it occupies today. From the outset this famous oyster bar and grill, with its arts and crafts movement-inspired interior and Italian-gothic façade, captured the vibrant mood of a metropolis about to embrace the roaring twenties.

The Bentley’s themselves were in the oyster business, with their own beds in West Mersea near Colchester. With the bivalve business booming the family decided to open a restaurant in London’s fashionable West End. Then, as today, Bentley’s offered a combination of informal, relatively relaxed eating at its downstairs oyster bar with a more formal grill restaurant upstairs.